Hope things work out for you. It sucks being sick all the time for sure and I know how frustrating/depressing it is when you cant figure out a path forward.

Certainly recurrent sinus infections often require antibiotics ( I dont think you are an abuser) but dont underestimate the effect antibiotics have on you gut flora (and potentially your overall health). My understanding is that it can take you gut bacteria 12 months to fully recover after a course of antibiotics.

Another left field suggestion is Lyme disease. I am not sure of the prevalence where you live, but here in the North East it is one of the first things most doctors would consider. Symptoms can be non specific and the current test in not particularly accurate unfortunately.

If none of this works, drink more Whiskey. I find that always helps
Craig

I feel like if I could just figure out what #1 is I could work on solving everything else. If I never took antibiotics again I could build up my gut GI and I could still live a healthy life style without a common cold bringing me down for 3 weeks.

Wow.
That’s a lot of antibiotics.
I would avoid antibiotics and get on some probiotics to build up your biome. A healthy biome is invaluable.

In addition Bromelain (the proteolytic enzyme from pineapple) has been shown to be quite effective in treating sinusitis. Most sinusitis by the way is not bacterial. Look at buying a cheap potent form of bromelain on Amazon. Read some of the reviews on amazon and google up studies on its efficacy.

Nate- you guys are so great, putting it all out there, because so many of us are dealing with some or all of it as well. Thanks for doing that. Two things I didn’t see on the thread: Local honey, and TSS tracking. First, if I’m getting pounded with pollen allergies (evergreen trees shed twice a year), I put some local honey in my coffee or tea, and it definitely helps.

On the TSS front- do you see a correlation between hard weeks, or easy weeks, and sickness? For me, moderate loads build immunity, but too much TSS or too little TSS will get me sick- especially the latter. I’ll bet my sleep quality tracks with that as well. If I combine travel with zero workouts, or too-hard workouts, that’s pretty much a guaranteed cold, or worse. If I can get my HR up to tempo for maybe 30 min/day while travelling- but not much more- I feel stronger to fight off the bugs.

I used to get “allergy sick” a lot, and the grass/tree/cat allergies made every spring an adventure. This may sound bizarre, however ever since getting a garage cat over 10 years ago my allergies aren’t as bad. And three years ago we picked up another cat, and this one is inside/outside. And now I actually enjoy spring. Weird.

Unlikely to help you, but I can relate as up until recently every spring made me sick.

Antibiotics can really wreck your immune system. Been there myself. If you have to take them in such quantities, then probably they are not that effective to start with. Your gut biome may be damaged in ways not fully recognizable or studied, and impacts your immune system. This has been my experience.

My friend suffered from severe allergies all his life, had testicular cancer, eczema. Recently he went on a raw diet lifestyle. Only thermally processed foods he allows himself are teas and porridge. Everything else is raw fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, honey, berries, and variations of such: juices, smoothies etc. He frequently fasts, recently as long as three weeks. Since then no colds, allergies , rides his bike and generally enjoys life. Not a very pleasant conversation partner at times )) as his favorite topic is his morning enema. But something is definitely working.

+1 on the bromelain, and then from what I’ve read, I would also suggest doing some research on usage of things like garlic & turmeric. All things I’ve found in my research on treating my allergies, trouble breathing & nasal polyp over the last year. I truly don’t know if these have helped me at all, but I’ve read enough to think that they could be worth a shot!

As a note, from what I’ve read, pairing turmeric with black pepper helps increase how much your body can use. Sounds gross, but tart cherry juice with turmeric and black pepper in there makes it manageable if you opt not to add it to food.

I suffer from allergies and have significant trouble breathing sometimes as a result, although from the sound of it nothing near as bad as you deal with Nate. Sorry to hear all that you’ve had to go through but hopefully a fix is right around the corner! Thanks for sharing all of your information.

This may seem too obvious, but it may be useful to be more mindful of general hygiene, especially when the kids are sick and during travel. Simple things such as washing hands after touching infected surfaces and not rubbing your hands on eyes/mouth/nose may could help and at the least won’t hurt. Also I’m not sure entirely sure what a CPAP machine looks like, but it may help also to ensure it is sterile when in-use.

If you’re convinced that anything airborne will get to you and stick, you could also try wearing a filtered mask especially when kids are sick or in crowded spaces (planes, buses, etc).

If you want probiotics, Kefir may be a better bet than Kombucha, and is mostly lactose-free as it gets eaten up by the bacteria.

One of the highest ORAC foods, probably the highest of readily supermarket available foods – more than twice that of turmeric and more than eight times that of black pepper and 200-300 times more than any raw fruit or veggie. Do cloves + cinnamon for a 1-2 punch.

PRE and PRO biotics.

High powered supplement form to get you colonized; food sources will not provide anywhere near the count you require. In a recent podcast @chad mentioned gut health having far reaching effects, as has been mentioned, you might have zero after 1+ years of antibiotics.

Specialists.

Cuz really, what does the internet know?

Good luck, but also damn!
You’re this sick and you’re still smashing it! I wouldn’t want to race a healthy Nate!

I stopped taking “good” bacteria (like Lactobacillus X or Bifidobacterium Y) a while ago, except for cases like diarrhea. The flora of the intestines is a very individual thing. Do you know your right mix?

Instead, I only take (weakish) “bad” bacteria (like Streptococcus Pneumoniae or Haemophilus Influenzae) in 3 sessions of 10 days over 3 months (10d on, 20d off, 10d on &c) to stimulate/train the immune system. If you already have an infection you can take it right away.

To give you an analogy: Instead of eating extra carbs all the time in order to have the most energy available when you need it (someday), you could train now using the energy you naturally have.

We’re also in a very dry climate. We are moving to a brand new house in the next 3 months so that should eliminate the air quality variable.

Maybe this is part of the answer here, instead of just pure “air quality”? I’m plagued by 3-5 sinus infections a year myself, so I feel your pain.

We live in Munich/germany, in a somewhat continental climate. The weather condition is often dominated by dry air coming in over the mountains. I’ve never been to Reno, but it sounds somewhat similar, just even dryer than munich. My symptoms improve a lot or even go away completely pretty much immediately when going to a different climate - especially to the seaside. My ENT even mentioned something like I should live by the sea. Just some food for thought.

edit: Just saw @RONDAL mention this as well - matches my experience exactly

@Nate Not that it will solve all your problems but it might help. Me and some of my direct family members are bad sleepers. We sleep light, wake up early and get woken up from noise easily. Once we are awake it is very difficult for us to fall back asleep again.

We do not want to use sleeping medication so for a long time we just had to deal with it. Untill my brother made cannabis oil for his girlfriend (who had rheumatism). A side effect of the oil (which he discovered from research) is that it will help you sleep. So he started taking a single drop of oil each night. And voila! No more broken nights. His quality of sleep improved greatly. So my mom and me started as well. Both of us improved our quality of sleep and duration. No more waking up many times a night and feel much better when waking up.

The first days you can feel a bit sluggish but that will pass. And you won’t get high because the THC has been removed from the oil in the destilation process.